This is the Old Blackfriars, 52 Castle St, Aberdeen.
I worked on this drawing standing in the large cobbled square called Castlegate. A passer-by walked up to where I was standing, and took an interest in the picture. I’ll call him Campbell. He had much to tell me, a visitor, about the city of his birth. He had been brought up in what he described as the “tenements” on the dock. “Six of us to a room,” he said. He’d trained as a coppersmith, and found work in the engine rooms of ships and submarines, making “boilers, pipes and flanges”.
I was sketching this pub at the request of a client who had happy memories of their time there. Campbell also had happy memories of his lively times at the pub, although his experiences pre-dated those of my client by some decades. It was a pub for folk working the docks Campbell told me, and “they had a hard life”.
Uncharacteristically for British people, we talked politics. The general election was coming up. My new friend had little time for politicians of any stripe. They don’t know what they are doing, he asserted. “It’s like watching a drunk man trying to walk down Union Street”. He indicated the wide straight street across the cobbles, and with an articulate hand gesture demonstrated the erratic movements of the inebriated.
I enjoyed his entertaining stories as I sketched. He went on his way when I was at the pen-and-ink stage. I hope that some of his stories made it into the finished drawing.
The main colours are: (DS=Daniel Smith watercolour)
– ultramarine blue finest (Schmincke)
– burnt umber (DS)
– haze pink (Schminke) – in the stones
– rose madder permanent (DS) – in the stones
For the details:
– permanent yellow deep
– pyrrole red
– mars yellow
– acrylic gold paint
Aberdeen is “The Grey City” for some. But for anyone who doubts that there really is pink in the stone, I include a photo of the cobbles.
This was a commission. Thank you to my client for inspiring me to draw this historic pub, and for their permission to post the pictures here. They kindly sent me a photo of the picture in its frame:
Jane Sketching 